You’d think a government that was sending black helicopters from Area 51 to check up on anyone who’s sneaking pork rinds and Yoo-hoo into his kid’s lunchbox instead of broccoli and granola juice would be able to come up with a simple way to run Monday holidays, but guess again.

With the exception of Labor Day, which has always been designated as the first Monday in September, they all have this persnickety habit of falling on different days of the week. A distaste for such persnickitiness begat the Uniform Holidays Act in 1968, which begat, as of 1971, both the three-day weekend and its misnamed offspring, Presidents Day.

Officially, believe it or not, the day is Washington’s Birthday, even though it can never fall on Washington’s actual birthdate, since the law says it must fall on the third Monday in February, which cannot ever be Feb. 22.

Not that any of this is crucial, certainly not compared to how sorry Josh Beckett is for eating all that chicken, or how fat Josh Beckett is after eating all that chicken, or how perturbed Josh Becket may be for being asked about eating all that chicken, but still, I wish we could be honest and admit that federal holidays are just an excuse for three-day weekends commemorating the national pastime, which as we all know, is shopping.

The lone holdout is Veterans Day. Veterans Day was for a while relegated to Monday status, and to the fourth Monday in October, to boot (What were they thinking?), but apparently an outbreak of seemliness gripped Congress in 1978 and Veterans Day was restored it to its standing as a moveable feast.

Right now, there are 10 federal holidays. The only months without any are March, April, June and August. This seems a shame, if only because symmetry is such a beautiful thing. So, as Congress seems to have nothing pressing to worry about these days, I’d like to offer them some possibilities for those holiday-starved months. Let’s face it; we can’t have enough opportunities to remember who we are as a nation, what we value, and who has led us here. Plus, you can never have enough chances to shop.

The second Monday in March should honor President Grover Cleveland, born March 18. No, not our most significant President, but he was the only one elected to non-consecutive terms. Thus, we’d also have to honor him on the fourth Monday in March.

Marketing tie-ins: handy slogan for stores pushing two-for-one sales: “Come back over and over, just like Grover!” Holiday-specific consumer items: mustache wax; Cialis, with one bathtub per term (he married a woman less than half his age, remember); and Hawaiian vacations: “Cleveland grabbed Hawaii; now let Hawaii grab you!”

As for April, we don’t want it on the third Monday. Wouldn’t want to lose Patriots Day. So how about this for a big sales push? We celebrate Fountain of Youth Day on the Monday nearest April 2, the day Ponce de Leon discovered Florida. (It’d be funny if it fell on April 1.) Great weekend to move tourists to Florida, sure, but how about all the crates of Botox and wrinkle cream, all the fitness plans and gym memberships, all the gift cards for Lasik surgery and Rogaine treatments that we could push?

Which leaves us with August, that long, lazy, nothin’ happenin’ month. Let’s see. Elvis died. He was only 42. So did Babe Ruth. He was just 53. Manson struck that month, too, the week before the idyllic goofiness of Woodstock. Washington, D.C., was burned by the British. Watts went up in flames, too. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution ushered in a decade of deceit and disorder. The first Gulf War began. Two atomic bombs were dropped. Nixon resigned. Marx died (Groucho, not Karl). The Beatles sang in public for the last time.

Seems just right for If Only Day, set aside for rueful remembrance and melancholy and wistfully wondering what might have been.